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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1238 Posts
On April 01 2026 16:11 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2026 15:26 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On April 01 2026 10:59 KwarK wrote:On April 01 2026 09:25 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On April 01 2026 08:55 KwarK wrote:
Total Iranian victory looks extremely likely at this point. Trump is now communicating a two week timeline to evacuating US forces and surrendering the Gulf to the superior Iranian army. I would like to point out the US is very much looking like it's taking the "walk away" option. I'm not sure this is characterised as 'total Iranian victory', they did after all request reparations (understantably, in the wake of a pretty much unprovoked attack during negotiation). And I don't see the US doing that. I'm not sure if the below quote was as a response to me, or just in general. But I did say this was going to be the likely eventual outcome, the US either loudly, or quietly just pisses off. Though, this could also just be what Trump thinks passes for guile, troops are being sent to the ME, surely for a reason. Also possible, that instead of actually evacuating, they try and seize Kharg Island over the long weekend for the markets. I don't think there's anything like enough troops there for a ground invasion of Iran at large. On March 24 2026 12:14 KwarK wrote:
There is no “walk away” option for the US. Abandoning the Persian Gulf entirely would be an absolute surrender. There are a dozen reasons for Iran to keep the strait closed for a long time.
Iran has, so far this war, taken orders of magnitude more damage than the US. The US has lost a handful of planes and crew and a lot of interceptors. Iran has lost its navy, air force, hardened bunkers, warehouses, stockpiles, bases etc., in addition to the new Supreme Leader having had his father, wife, and teenage son killed.
As I keep repeating, the US and Israel peak immediately, they do the most damage on day 1 where they destroy all the highest value targets. On day 2 they destroy the second highest value targets because they can't destroy the highest value targets a second time. On day 3 the third. The longer the war goes the less damage bombing can do. They already killed his wife, they can't do it again.
Iran's retaliation grows steadily over time but doesn't even start to kick in until day 150 or so. There is significant latency between crude oil leaving the Gulf and the diesel in a gas station. Consumers haven't actually seen any impact in supply yet. The prices increases are speculative, suppliers don't want to sell today if they think that the price will be higher tomorrow and they won't have oil tomorrow to sell. And even once the supply does drop the strategic reserves have enough to cover months of the missing output from the Gulf. As the strategic reserves run low the prices will increase. As prices increase additional more expensive sources of oil will be brought online which will be priced accordingly. The longer it goes the higher the price gets.
That is Iran's retaliation. It hasn't started yet and it won't have any deterrence impact if they sign an early ceasefire. Even if Israel and the US stop bombing entirely they still need to interdict it, or charge such high transit fees that prices are higher. They need people to remember that 2026 was the year where there was a global recession caused by high oil prices so that the next time someone wants to bomb Iran they think twice. If Iran opens the strait early then they have no deterrent. They'd be saying "feel free to bomb the shit out of us for a week, we'll announce a disruption but as long as you stocked up the reserve ahead of time you can weather it". They'll get bombed by Israel once a year.
The idea that the US and Israel can beat the shit out of Iran, kill the leader's wife, kill his son, and then call a timeout before he hits back is absurd to me. It would undermine every single part of their publicly stated strategy of using the strait as a last resort deterrent bargaining chip. They constructed this strategy over decades, they know this. It would be national suicide.
The idea that Iran, one of the largest oil exporters in the world, has nothing to gain from spiking oil prices is nuts. The regime and country have been absolutely savaged. I've been hating on American strategy a lot here because the American strategy is nonsensical but that doesn't mean that the USAF can't demolish buildings. They were in terrible shape before and much worse shape now than they were then. If the regime is to survive they need hard foreign currency. They need their oil on the market and as few of their competitors as possible as a matter of national survival. The rebuilding project will not be cheap and there are a lot of regime loyalists who will need to be paid.
Additionally it simply wouldn't make sense not to continue the position that they control the strait. Free navigation of the seas is a postwar American invention enforced by the US Navy. Lots of countries would like to declare that actually they own this bit of water or that bit of water and that everyone has to pay them transit fees or whatever but they haven't been able to because the US Navy will disprove that notion. These waterways aren't just open by default, they're national territory by default, open is an artificial state of affairs that has been constructed and maintained by the US Navy. If the US declares that they're no longer interested in keeping the strait open then it won't suddenly revert to free neutrality under a ceasefire. It'll be owned by the strongest.
This is existential for Iran. Either they establish a convincing deterrent by confronting the US Navy over the strait and winning (which includes the US Navy forfeiting) or they die. There's no deal to be made here where the strait is reopened any time soon, it'll stay closed until such a time as a country with sufficient force projection to open it opens it. My point in that longer quote was that walking away means forfeiting a central pillar of US hegemony for 80 years. It isn’t a ceasefire or a timeout or going home, it is a defeat of the US Navy, it is the US Navy not being able to fulfill its core mission. US surrender. Reparations or not the defeat is staggering. Oh I agree, from the POV of the US, this is humiliating setback to their interests. But from the perspective of the rest of the world, and especially Iran, this isn't really defeat of the US. In the sense that there is no resolution, there is no formal agreement, no reparations, no security guarantee, no understanding that there won't just be another decapitation strike in a few weeks/months. It's just the US fucking off in the middle of a fight out of Iran's practical reach. Iran and Israel will probably have at each other for a bit more, but rather than coming to victory, or defeat, or ceasefire or any kind of resolution, the US seems set to... just stop directly participating. The US stopping its intervention is exactly what Iranian victory looks like. Imagine if Russia stopped its intervention is in Ukraine and went home. That would absolutely be called a victory for Ukraine even if the Russian army first fortified the Crim and said they weren't giving that back, or if Russia didn't give any guarantees of future safety or reparations. Iran got attacked. Withstanding the attack is a victory. They had an Islamic theocracy before the war and still have an Islamic theocracy now. They don't have the power to force the US or Israel to pay any reparations. But they do have the power to charge tolls from any ship trying to pass the Strait of Hormuz. That is something they couldn't do before. And sure, Trump will call it a total victory. It's the advantage and disadvantage of going in with no plan and daily changing goals, you can always just say "we did it, adios", but if the actual outcome is that you leave yourself weaker, and your opponent stronger (long-term) then nobody anywhere (except oBlade and other "centrists") is going to believe you.
Again, from the US perspective, yes withdrawing your troops is tantamount to military defeat. My point is, the war against the US isn't exactly over for Iran. I would think without any sort of assurance that some senior official isn't about to be assassinated again in a few months, what is motivating them to not completely disallow US ships, or ships bound for the US from passing through the strait (yes, i understand this is not a significant amount)? Why should they stop bombing US assets in neighbouring countries? As far as they are concerned, there's no reason to stop considering themselves still at war with the US.
It's well and good for the US to just move out and say 'oh no we've been defeated' as unlikely as that is. Wars are not over until the belligerents actually start talking to each other about stopping the war. The US simply withdrawing does not actually resolve the issue of this war.
Don't get me wrong 'no resolution' is exactly what I'm predicting to be the outcome of this war (even if it does escalate first). The US will move basically everything out of reach of Iran, then (hopefully) be smart enough not to poke the bear while the fighting between the two countries will just fizzle out. Iran will eventually find some balance between reminding the US not to come back, and not pissing off their neighbours so much as to actually do something about it. US ships may not be passing through the straits for the forseeable future.
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On April 01 2026 16:44 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2026 02:22 oBlade wrote:Their "capabilities" are not "completely" degraded. But there's a limit to the point there. In April 1945 Germany did not have a chance of like oh maybe turning it around. You can post this until you are blue in the face, no matter how much you hate Trump, Iran's not going to defeat him for you. To be honest, if the US pulls out without genuine regime change happening, then it's functionally a defeat. EDIT: Having read some subsequent posts, it's clear that you think one person dying is the same as the regime dying. This is not the case. If you ask the question "Is the IRGC still part of the regime?", and the answer is a resounding "Yes!", then regime change hasn't really happened.
Yeah if you don't read the news and also think only one person has died, it'd be easy to completely misunderstand everything I say and come to that wrong conclusion.
On April 01 2026 16:11 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2026 16:36 oBlade wrote:On March 31 2026 15:43 Acrofales wrote:
If anything is going to get people using the 25th amendment to chuck him out, it's surrendering the Hormuz strait to Iran. But Vance is a fucking lunatic, so is that truly an improvement? That's funny to think that every country in the world minus the US and Iran is incapable of getting their oil out of the Persian Gulf without the help of the US. You're normally smarter than that. The point isn't whether or not other countries can get their oil. The point is that this war ending with Iran maintaining its antagonistic theocracy and now also controlling the Strait of Hormuz is an unequivocally terrible result for the US. The rest of the world was already losing faith in the US as the protector of free trade, but the military was still their big stick they could use to bully rogue nations. Now it seems they are just as useless at that as Russia. So if the US doesn't guarantee free trade and the US military doesn't protect it, why should anybody listen to the US at all? And being the president who threw all that away without even a coherent thought to begin with, against the advice of most of his advisors, seems like a president unfit for duty. But covfefe to you sir!
The word "antagonistic" seems to cover two things. The desire to do aggression, and the doing of aggression. Iran can be as antagonistic as they want in their own heads but if they lose all their missiles, navy, and air force, get cut off from their proxies, lose their industrial base to replace their arms, lose 20 years of nuclear progress, and have no ground army capable of wars of aggression, that's better than before the war. They cannot be more antagonistic in a practical sense after that.
The oil issues affect the US but not directly. The US gets its oil elsewhere. That's why the US was able to do this.
The symbol "We the US will bomb the shit out of you if you are evil, even if there's a short term oil shock that makes almost everyone else want to look the other way even if they could do something about it" is a very accessible message of moral clarity to the whole world.
Iran already controlled the Strait of Hormuz because they were next to it. Exercising that control is anywhere from illegal to a direct act of war based on hundreds of years of international and maritime law going back to the Age of Sail back when Spain and Britain were the naval powers of the world long before Britain decolonized their own fleet and relevance. For example Britain controlled Gibraltar but didn't block the Mediterranean outside of times of war. To the extent Iran was in a position where the THREAT of "shutdown" was the shield they used to protect themselves against consequences from the impotent international community, they already controlled it.
It's not that Iran didn't control the Strait of Hormuz before and now they do. The issue is they have had a hostage for a long time and the process of taking the gun out of their hands is in progress. The problem was the hostage and the gun, everything wasn't hunky dory just because they hadn't shot the hostage yet.
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On April 01 2026 17:28 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2026 16:11 Acrofales wrote:On April 01 2026 15:26 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On April 01 2026 10:59 KwarK wrote:On April 01 2026 09:25 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On April 01 2026 08:55 KwarK wrote:
Total Iranian victory looks extremely likely at this point. Trump is now communicating a two week timeline to evacuating US forces and surrendering the Gulf to the superior Iranian army. I would like to point out the US is very much looking like it's taking the "walk away" option. I'm not sure this is characterised as 'total Iranian victory', they did after all request reparations (understantably, in the wake of a pretty much unprovoked attack during negotiation). And I don't see the US doing that. I'm not sure if the below quote was as a response to me, or just in general. But I did say this was going to be the likely eventual outcome, the US either loudly, or quietly just pisses off. Though, this could also just be what Trump thinks passes for guile, troops are being sent to the ME, surely for a reason. Also possible, that instead of actually evacuating, they try and seize Kharg Island over the long weekend for the markets. I don't think there's anything like enough troops there for a ground invasion of Iran at large. On March 24 2026 12:14 KwarK wrote:
There is no “walk away” option for the US. Abandoning the Persian Gulf entirely would be an absolute surrender. There are a dozen reasons for Iran to keep the strait closed for a long time.
Iran has, so far this war, taken orders of magnitude more damage than the US. The US has lost a handful of planes and crew and a lot of interceptors. Iran has lost its navy, air force, hardened bunkers, warehouses, stockpiles, bases etc., in addition to the new Supreme Leader having had his father, wife, and teenage son killed.
As I keep repeating, the US and Israel peak immediately, they do the most damage on day 1 where they destroy all the highest value targets. On day 2 they destroy the second highest value targets because they can't destroy the highest value targets a second time. On day 3 the third. The longer the war goes the less damage bombing can do. They already killed his wife, they can't do it again.
Iran's retaliation grows steadily over time but doesn't even start to kick in until day 150 or so. There is significant latency between crude oil leaving the Gulf and the diesel in a gas station. Consumers haven't actually seen any impact in supply yet. The prices increases are speculative, suppliers don't want to sell today if they think that the price will be higher tomorrow and they won't have oil tomorrow to sell. And even once the supply does drop the strategic reserves have enough to cover months of the missing output from the Gulf. As the strategic reserves run low the prices will increase. As prices increase additional more expensive sources of oil will be brought online which will be priced accordingly. The longer it goes the higher the price gets.
That is Iran's retaliation. It hasn't started yet and it won't have any deterrence impact if they sign an early ceasefire. Even if Israel and the US stop bombing entirely they still need to interdict it, or charge such high transit fees that prices are higher. They need people to remember that 2026 was the year where there was a global recession caused by high oil prices so that the next time someone wants to bomb Iran they think twice. If Iran opens the strait early then they have no deterrent. They'd be saying "feel free to bomb the shit out of us for a week, we'll announce a disruption but as long as you stocked up the reserve ahead of time you can weather it". They'll get bombed by Israel once a year.
The idea that the US and Israel can beat the shit out of Iran, kill the leader's wife, kill his son, and then call a timeout before he hits back is absurd to me. It would undermine every single part of their publicly stated strategy of using the strait as a last resort deterrent bargaining chip. They constructed this strategy over decades, they know this. It would be national suicide.
The idea that Iran, one of the largest oil exporters in the world, has nothing to gain from spiking oil prices is nuts. The regime and country have been absolutely savaged. I've been hating on American strategy a lot here because the American strategy is nonsensical but that doesn't mean that the USAF can't demolish buildings. They were in terrible shape before and much worse shape now than they were then. If the regime is to survive they need hard foreign currency. They need their oil on the market and as few of their competitors as possible as a matter of national survival. The rebuilding project will not be cheap and there are a lot of regime loyalists who will need to be paid.
Additionally it simply wouldn't make sense not to continue the position that they control the strait. Free navigation of the seas is a postwar American invention enforced by the US Navy. Lots of countries would like to declare that actually they own this bit of water or that bit of water and that everyone has to pay them transit fees or whatever but they haven't been able to because the US Navy will disprove that notion. These waterways aren't just open by default, they're national territory by default, open is an artificial state of affairs that has been constructed and maintained by the US Navy. If the US declares that they're no longer interested in keeping the strait open then it won't suddenly revert to free neutrality under a ceasefire. It'll be owned by the strongest.
This is existential for Iran. Either they establish a convincing deterrent by confronting the US Navy over the strait and winning (which includes the US Navy forfeiting) or they die. There's no deal to be made here where the strait is reopened any time soon, it'll stay closed until such a time as a country with sufficient force projection to open it opens it. My point in that longer quote was that walking away means forfeiting a central pillar of US hegemony for 80 years. It isn’t a ceasefire or a timeout or going home, it is a defeat of the US Navy, it is the US Navy not being able to fulfill its core mission. US surrender. Reparations or not the defeat is staggering. Oh I agree, from the POV of the US, this is humiliating setback to their interests. But from the perspective of the rest of the world, and especially Iran, this isn't really defeat of the US. In the sense that there is no resolution, there is no formal agreement, no reparations, no security guarantee, no understanding that there won't just be another decapitation strike in a few weeks/months. It's just the US fucking off in the middle of a fight out of Iran's practical reach. Iran and Israel will probably have at each other for a bit more, but rather than coming to victory, or defeat, or ceasefire or any kind of resolution, the US seems set to... just stop directly participating. The US stopping its intervention is exactly what Iranian victory looks like. Imagine if Russia stopped its intervention is in Ukraine and went home. That would absolutely be called a victory for Ukraine even if the Russian army first fortified the Crim and said they weren't giving that back, or if Russia didn't give any guarantees of future safety or reparations. Iran got attacked. Withstanding the attack is a victory. They had an Islamic theocracy before the war and still have an Islamic theocracy now. They don't have the power to force the US or Israel to pay any reparations. But they do have the power to charge tolls from any ship trying to pass the Strait of Hormuz. That is something they couldn't do before. And sure, Trump will call it a total victory. It's the advantage and disadvantage of going in with no plan and daily changing goals, you can always just say "we did it, adios", but if the actual outcome is that you leave yourself weaker, and your opponent stronger (long-term) then nobody anywhere (except oBlade and other "centrists") is going to believe you. Again, from the US perspective, yes withdrawing your troops is tantamount to military defeat. My point is, the war against the US isn't exactly over for Iran. I would think without any sort of assurance that some senior official isn't about to be assassinated again in a few months, what is motivating them to not completely disallow US ships, or ships bound for the US from passing through the strait (yes, i understand this is not a significant amount)? Why should they stop bombing US assets in neighbouring countries? As far as they are concerned, there's no reason to stop considering themselves still at war with the US. It's well and good for the US to just move out and say 'oh no we've been defeated' as unlikely as that is. Wars are not over until the belligerents actually start talking to each other about stopping the war. The US simply withdrawing does not actually resolve the issue of this war. Don't get me wrong 'no resolution' is exactly what I'm predicting to be the outcome of this war (even if it does escalate first). The US will move basically everything out of reach of Iran, then (hopefully) be smart enough not to poke the bear while the fighting between the two countries will just fizzle out. Iran will eventually find some balance between reminding the US not to come back, and not pissing off their neighbours so much as to actually do something about it. US ships may not be passing through the straits for the forseeable future.
How is Iran being able to charge for passage through the strait not both an economic and military longterm win? From their point of view, the US retreating is the victory condition. As a bit of an aside, if the US changes its approach from absolute military domination to threatening surgical strikes focussing on assassinating heads of state, what do you think the repercusions might for international relationships?
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On April 01 2026 18:11 oBlade wrote:
The symbol "We the US will bomb the shit out of you if you are evil, even if there's a short term oil shock that makes almost everyone else want to look the other way even if they could do something about it" is a very accessible message of moral clarity to the whole world.
Yeah, the message is clear: "We are the (evil) empire, kneel or get bombed to bits."
People didn't want to look the other way, until Trump killed Obamas treaty with Iran the world looked very closely. But the US decided "nah, forget that", we rather just occasionally bomb you.
Moral clarity... Just go fuck yourself.
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On April 01 2026 18:11 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2026 16:44 MJG wrote:On April 01 2026 02:22 oBlade wrote:Their "capabilities" are not "completely" degraded. But there's a limit to the point there. In April 1945 Germany did not have a chance of like oh maybe turning it around. You can post this until you are blue in the face, no matter how much you hate Trump, Iran's not going to defeat him for you. To be honest, if the US pulls out without genuine regime change happening, then it's functionally a defeat. EDIT: Having read some subsequent posts, it's clear that you think one person dying is the same as the regime dying. This is not the case. If you ask the question "Is the IRGC still part of the regime?", and the answer is a resounding "Yes!", then regime change hasn't really happened. Yeah if you don't read the news and also think only one person has died, it'd be easy to completely misunderstand everything I say and come to that wrong conclusion.
When did I say that I think only one person has died?
I'm merely pointing out that assassinating a head of state doesn't change the machinations of the system below them.
If the clerics and the IRGC keep their hands on the levers of power then regime change hasn't happened.
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oBlade claiming you shouldn't use your Trump card when Trump is trying pull one over on you is peak.
A THREAT as you claim it, is indeed just that. You use it in case things go sour. A THREAT could also be reimagined with the tiniest of creativity as a strategic advantage, something that - in geopolitics - you should be aware of and is quite a good thing to have as a country when you can have a perk like that. Sadly, the Trump cabinet failed to account for it, somehow. With the bestest intel in the world. And now they've also, somehow, managed to make them even more hated by the entire world. Lmao, even.
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On March 28 2026 15:25 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2026 12:02 baal wrote:On March 27 2026 22:01 EnDeR_ wrote:
Considering the complexity and scale of the problem, dealing with COVID was always going to be difficult. Not all interventions were successful, but it wasn't all bad. Operation warp speed was a huge success, for instance, and something I'm very grateful for. I don't know if you are in twitter but the virologist community and pretty much every statistician were imploring to react quickly with extreme measures, most countries under reacted and were so slow, (east Asia reacted much better since they've dealt with outbreaks before), travel restrictions were way too late so they did nothing and the outbreak became a pandemic. The OMS on Jan 15th said that there was no evidence of human-to-human contagion that was a month after many videos of the Chinese dropping dead on the streets were welding in people in their apartments, 15 days later the OMS declared it a global emergency. Trump said it was like the flu, Pelosi went to China Town encouraging people to go out, Boris Johnson said it had a quick recovery, Mexico's president told people to go eat out, the press keep comparing its deadliness with the flu etc etc etc. "operation warp speed" was just subsidizing vaccine production and lowering regulations, that is your benchmark for state competency? damn. Regarding the bolded; it is not quite the same. A message of "vaccines continue to be effective" generates a lot less engagement than "they're coming for your kids"; algorithms are biased to promote unusual content because that generates more engagement. There's a whole industry of people that have figured out how to get you to engage; i mean it's the whole basis of "click-bait". The anti-vaxxers debate with Dr mike also got many millions views, that is the stuff that actually works. Complex new problem arrived and governments were simply unprepared or ignored their own pandemic guidance. I'm not going to disagree that a lot of it was a shit show, I also sympathise somewhat because there weren't really any clear solutions until the vaccine arrived and every intervention had downsides. In retrospect, all governments that I'm aware of instituted some form of lockdown and some form of mask mandate, which did help to save lives with some big and obvious downsides. Show nested quote +operation warp speed" was just subsidizing vaccine production and lowering regulations, that is your benchmark for state competency? damn.
You seem to be implying that safety standards were lowered, which was not the case. They allowed phases to overlap, which reduced the timescale, but no safety standard was compromised. What you are stating here is simply the unsubstantiated antivaxx argument. I don't think you understand just quite how many scientists participated in the development of the vaccine and how big an effort was done to get it done. Not just by US scientists but a worldwide coordinated effort. It is something that as a scientist I'm incredibly proud of, we all came together and delivered when we were needed. With regards to your last statement, do you have any source which studied the effect of this video/debate on the worldwide growth of the antivaxx movement?
It wasn't a new issue, it's a very old issue that was a matter of time, where protocols and even international organizations like the WHO were created and they were absolutely useless.
You are giving the mildest concession and not addressing the point's I've made:
Most countries "closed their borders" far too late, and this was in the early China/Italy/Iran stages where it appeared to be a much deadlier virus and even so morons
How do you justify the WHO making a public statement saying is no evidence of human-to-human contagion 15 days before declaring it a world emergency mid January?
They obviously fucking knew the virus had already rampaged across Wuhan months ago but they were busy playing politics running cove for china, to say it was disgraceful it was an understatement, there should have been an investigation and people should have gone to jail, their corruption probably costed many lives.
After containment failed and the pandemic was accepted as unstoppable the strategy became allowing the spread at a rate where it didn't collapse hospitals through lock-downs, calculated about 2 months, good strategy, and then... the lockdowns continued for like almost 2 fucking years completely unrelated to the original goal.
I'm not implying anything about safety regarding the vaccine do you believe that libertarians think reducing regulations is bad and unsafe?
The only thing the government did was get slightly out of the way of private health corps and write a check, even the rollout was underwhelming, the vaccine was a great achievement for scientists and private healthcare enterprises, how in the hell was that a government win?
It's bizarre to me that you look back into COVID as an example of good governance, our heads must be wired different.
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On April 01 2026 18:46 Uldridge wrote:
oBlade claiming you shouldn't use your Trump card when Trump is trying pull one over on you is peak.
A THREAT as you claim it, is indeed just that. You use it in case things go sour. A THREAT could also be reimagined with the tiniest of creativity as a strategic advantage, something that - in geopolitics - you should be aware of and is quite a good thing to have as a country when you can have a perk like that. Sadly, the Trump cabinet failed to account for it, somehow. With the bestest intel in the world. And now they've also, somehow, managed to make them even more hated by the entire world. Lmao, even.
Someone who‘s sinking will add more weight to the ship to make it sink faster if they are incapable of self-reflection and unwilling to correct past mistakes.
He even has the luxury of people telling him he‘s doing something wrong.
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On April 01 2026 18:11 oBlade wrote:
The issue is they have had a hostage for a long time and the process of taking the gun out of their hands is in progress.
I think today it's a proper day for jokes like this.
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On March 29 2026 19:03 Liquid`Drone wrote:
The big difference between supporting nazism and communism today is that communism has a theoretical framework which differs greatly from the real world examples of what self-professed communist countries were like, so you can say that I idealize a communist society where the workers own the means of production and where people get according to need and contribute according to ability etc etc (not getting into whether this is in conflict with human nature or whether it's possible to get there) while also saying that the ussr was a totalitarian shithole entirely different from what I envision and idealized and that Stalin was a truly heinous and despicable dictator whose evils rival those of Hitler.
Whereas if you say that you are a Nazi, that means you support Hitler because the two are intertwined in an entirely different manner. Now if someone says they are believers of white supremacy or scientific racism or something of that sort, they could plausibly be opposed to nazi imperialism or the holocaust, but someone who says they are a nazi cannot. Likewise if you are a self professed stalinist that would be different from saying you are a communist.
But still communism has far less stigma than white supremacy, white supremacists consider their beliefs egoistic and pragmatic, unlike communists who believe they operate under a superior moral framework and that is why they are far more dangerous because as CS Lewis said, "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
The older I get the less I care about what people intend and I pay more attention to what people actually do.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1238 Posts
On April 01 2026 18:22 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2026 17:28 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On April 01 2026 16:11 Acrofales wrote:On April 01 2026 15:26 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On April 01 2026 10:59 KwarK wrote:On April 01 2026 09:25 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On April 01 2026 08:55 KwarK wrote:
Total Iranian victory looks extremely likely at this point. Trump is now communicating a two week timeline to evacuating US forces and surrendering the Gulf to the superior Iranian army. I would like to point out the US is very much looking like it's taking the "walk away" option. I'm not sure this is characterised as 'total Iranian victory', they did after all request reparations (understantably, in the wake of a pretty much unprovoked attack during negotiation). And I don't see the US doing that. I'm not sure if the below quote was as a response to me, or just in general. But I did say this was going to be the likely eventual outcome, the US either loudly, or quietly just pisses off. Though, this could also just be what Trump thinks passes for guile, troops are being sent to the ME, surely for a reason. Also possible, that instead of actually evacuating, they try and seize Kharg Island over the long weekend for the markets. I don't think there's anything like enough troops there for a ground invasion of Iran at large. On March 24 2026 12:14 KwarK wrote:
There is no “walk away” option for the US. Abandoning the Persian Gulf entirely would be an absolute surrender. There are a dozen reasons for Iran to keep the strait closed for a long time.
Iran has, so far this war, taken orders of magnitude more damage than the US. The US has lost a handful of planes and crew and a lot of interceptors. Iran has lost its navy, air force, hardened bunkers, warehouses, stockpiles, bases etc., in addition to the new Supreme Leader having had his father, wife, and teenage son killed.
As I keep repeating, the US and Israel peak immediately, they do the most damage on day 1 where they destroy all the highest value targets. On day 2 they destroy the second highest value targets because they can't destroy the highest value targets a second time. On day 3 the third. The longer the war goes the less damage bombing can do. They already killed his wife, they can't do it again.
Iran's retaliation grows steadily over time but doesn't even start to kick in until day 150 or so. There is significant latency between crude oil leaving the Gulf and the diesel in a gas station. Consumers haven't actually seen any impact in supply yet. The prices increases are speculative, suppliers don't want to sell today if they think that the price will be higher tomorrow and they won't have oil tomorrow to sell. And even once the supply does drop the strategic reserves have enough to cover months of the missing output from the Gulf. As the strategic reserves run low the prices will increase. As prices increase additional more expensive sources of oil will be brought online which will be priced accordingly. The longer it goes the higher the price gets.
That is Iran's retaliation. It hasn't started yet and it won't have any deterrence impact if they sign an early ceasefire. Even if Israel and the US stop bombing entirely they still need to interdict it, or charge such high transit fees that prices are higher. They need people to remember that 2026 was the year where there was a global recession caused by high oil prices so that the next time someone wants to bomb Iran they think twice. If Iran opens the strait early then they have no deterrent. They'd be saying "feel free to bomb the shit out of us for a week, we'll announce a disruption but as long as you stocked up the reserve ahead of time you can weather it". They'll get bombed by Israel once a year.
The idea that the US and Israel can beat the shit out of Iran, kill the leader's wife, kill his son, and then call a timeout before he hits back is absurd to me. It would undermine every single part of their publicly stated strategy of using the strait as a last resort deterrent bargaining chip. They constructed this strategy over decades, they know this. It would be national suicide.
The idea that Iran, one of the largest oil exporters in the world, has nothing to gain from spiking oil prices is nuts. The regime and country have been absolutely savaged. I've been hating on American strategy a lot here because the American strategy is nonsensical but that doesn't mean that the USAF can't demolish buildings. They were in terrible shape before and much worse shape now than they were then. If the regime is to survive they need hard foreign currency. They need their oil on the market and as few of their competitors as possible as a matter of national survival. The rebuilding project will not be cheap and there are a lot of regime loyalists who will need to be paid.
Additionally it simply wouldn't make sense not to continue the position that they control the strait. Free navigation of the seas is a postwar American invention enforced by the US Navy. Lots of countries would like to declare that actually they own this bit of water or that bit of water and that everyone has to pay them transit fees or whatever but they haven't been able to because the US Navy will disprove that notion. These waterways aren't just open by default, they're national territory by default, open is an artificial state of affairs that has been constructed and maintained by the US Navy. If the US declares that they're no longer interested in keeping the strait open then it won't suddenly revert to free neutrality under a ceasefire. It'll be owned by the strongest.
This is existential for Iran. Either they establish a convincing deterrent by confronting the US Navy over the strait and winning (which includes the US Navy forfeiting) or they die. There's no deal to be made here where the strait is reopened any time soon, it'll stay closed until such a time as a country with sufficient force projection to open it opens it. My point in that longer quote was that walking away means forfeiting a central pillar of US hegemony for 80 years. It isn’t a ceasefire or a timeout or going home, it is a defeat of the US Navy, it is the US Navy not being able to fulfill its core mission. US surrender. Reparations or not the defeat is staggering. Oh I agree, from the POV of the US, this is humiliating setback to their interests. But from the perspective of the rest of the world, and especially Iran, this isn't really defeat of the US. In the sense that there is no resolution, there is no formal agreement, no reparations, no security guarantee, no understanding that there won't just be another decapitation strike in a few weeks/months. It's just the US fucking off in the middle of a fight out of Iran's practical reach. Iran and Israel will probably have at each other for a bit more, but rather than coming to victory, or defeat, or ceasefire or any kind of resolution, the US seems set to... just stop directly participating. The US stopping its intervention is exactly what Iranian victory looks like. Imagine if Russia stopped its intervention is in Ukraine and went home. That would absolutely be called a victory for Ukraine even if the Russian army first fortified the Crim and said they weren't giving that back, or if Russia didn't give any guarantees of future safety or reparations. Iran got attacked. Withstanding the attack is a victory. They had an Islamic theocracy before the war and still have an Islamic theocracy now. They don't have the power to force the US or Israel to pay any reparations. But they do have the power to charge tolls from any ship trying to pass the Strait of Hormuz. That is something they couldn't do before. And sure, Trump will call it a total victory. It's the advantage and disadvantage of going in with no plan and daily changing goals, you can always just say "we did it, adios", but if the actual outcome is that you leave yourself weaker, and your opponent stronger (long-term) then nobody anywhere (except oBlade and other "centrists") is going to believe you. Again, from the US perspective, yes withdrawing your troops is tantamount to military defeat. My point is, the war against the US isn't exactly over for Iran. I would think without any sort of assurance that some senior official isn't about to be assassinated again in a few months, what is motivating them to not completely disallow US ships, or ships bound for the US from passing through the strait (yes, i understand this is not a significant amount)? Why should they stop bombing US assets in neighbouring countries? As far as they are concerned, there's no reason to stop considering themselves still at war with the US. It's well and good for the US to just move out and say 'oh no we've been defeated' as unlikely as that is. Wars are not over until the belligerents actually start talking to each other about stopping the war. The US simply withdrawing does not actually resolve the issue of this war. Don't get me wrong 'no resolution' is exactly what I'm predicting to be the outcome of this war (even if it does escalate first). The US will move basically everything out of reach of Iran, then (hopefully) be smart enough not to poke the bear while the fighting between the two countries will just fizzle out. Iran will eventually find some balance between reminding the US not to come back, and not pissing off their neighbours so much as to actually do something about it. US ships may not be passing through the straits for the forseeable future. How is Iran being able to charge for passage through the strait not both an economic and military longterm win? From their point of view, the US retreating is the victory condition. As a bit of an aside, if the US changes its approach from absolute military domination to threatening surgical strikes focussing on assassinating heads of state, what do you think the repercusions might for international relationships?
Depends what you mean by longterm win. I'm speaking about victory or defeat strictly in terms of resolution either towards or against strategic goals. There really isn't a win or a loss here, because we are not looking at resolution anytime soon.
While certainly having control of the strait of Hormuz is advantageous, it clearly wasn't one of their strategic goals to begin with. If they can do it now under a bombing campaign, after half their senior leadership have been killed, then they could have done it before.
Everything they've done in the last several decades or so suggest to me they are a rational actor, that doesn't intentionally want to make itself a global pariah. While it is no saint, and does try to spread it's regional influence, while it certainly has beef against Israel and Saudi Arabia, all it seems to really want from the US, is to be left alone. Like in a formal guaranteed way.
They have repeatedly agreed to inspections and as long as the deals were followed, they too have followed them. When the US inevitably reneges on the deal, they start working on their nuclear program again, which clearly signals to me that they want to have leverage to have something to give away when renegotiating the deal. Somehow the US never gets the hint, and always expects Iran to comply, without themselves abiding by their agreements.
This doesn't speak to me of a country that wants to illegally take control of strait which vessels have transit passage under international law, and therefore piss off most of the world, and like, all of Asia. This seems like something they do because it's one of their limited and effective options to materially hurt a much more militarily powerful enemy that seems really hellbent on not ever agreeing to not bomb them, and on reneging on those agreements when they do exist.
As for what if the US changes it's approach? I can't imagine it impacts their international relationships much at all. They've clearly shown that they have no regard for diplomatic niceties or sovereignty of other states (other than Israel it seems). I don't know how it goes lower from there? Maybe they can formally declare war on most of the world at once? Like Liberation day, but instead of tariffs, he just releases a list of countries they are now formally at war with. (I'm sorry, he doesn't have the authority to declare war, a list of countries they are at pre-emptive retaliation with).
If anything some people breathe a sigh of relief, at least the success rate of regime change by air campaign alone is, and still remains 0%. And they had been doing a lot of regime change until recently.
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If the US just walks way I would expect the rest of the world to get around the negotiation table with Iran to talk about easing traffic through the strait and for Iran to try and score whatever it can before agreeing to return to the old status quo.
The biggest thing Iran wants (for the US to leave them alone) is something the rest of the world cannot give them.
It could well end up being that the rest of the world ends up paying indirect reparations through a tax on the strait.
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On April 01 2026 19:26 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2026 19:03 Liquid`Drone wrote:
The big difference between supporting nazism and communism today is that communism has a theoretical framework which differs greatly from the real world examples of what self-professed communist countries were like, so you can say that I idealize a communist society where the workers own the means of production and where people get according to need and contribute according to ability etc etc (not getting into whether this is in conflict with human nature or whether it's possible to get there) while also saying that the ussr was a totalitarian shithole entirely different from what I envision and idealized and that Stalin was a truly heinous and despicable dictator whose evils rival those of Hitler.
Whereas if you say that you are a Nazi, that means you support Hitler because the two are intertwined in an entirely different manner. Now if someone says they are believers of white supremacy or scientific racism or something of that sort, they could plausibly be opposed to nazi imperialism or the holocaust, but someone who says they are a nazi cannot. Likewise if you are a self professed stalinist that would be different from saying you are a communist. But still communism has far less stigma than white supremacy, white supremacists consider their beliefs egoistic and pragmatic, unlike communists who believe they operate under a superior moral framework and that is why they are far more dangerous because as CS Lewis said, "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." The older I get the less I care about what people intend and I pay more attention to what people actually do.
If communists should be stigmatized because of Mao, the Holodomor, Pol Pot, etc. then why shouldn't capitalists be stigmatized because of Hitler, the Atlantic slave trade, the Irish famine, etc.?
Also, can't that C. S. Lewis quote also be used to refer to capitalists who did immoral things because they genuinely believe communism must be stopped at any cost, like when the CIA supported numerous right-wing dictators solely because of their anti-Soviet stance?
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Northern Ireland26494 Posts
On April 01 2026 18:30 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2026 18:11 oBlade wrote:
The symbol "We the US will bomb the shit out of you if you are evil, even if there's a short term oil shock that makes almost everyone else want to look the other way even if they could do something about it" is a very accessible message of moral clarity to the whole world.
Yeah, the message is clear: "We are the (evil) empire, kneel or get bombed to bits." People didn't want to look the other way, until Trump killed Obamas treaty with Iran the world looked very closely. But the US decided "nah, forget that", we rather just occasionally bomb you. Moral clarity... Just go fuck yourself.
It’s utter, utter bollocks.
I mean there is something to be said that much oppression is tolerated for our collective convenience, and in an ideal world that wouldn’t be the case.
The idea that the US is waging war for altruistic reasons and is being hampered by moral cowardice informed by self-interested pragmatism from various allies is utterly ludicrous.
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On April 01 2026 19:06 baal wrote:
I'm not implying anything about safety regarding the vaccine do you believe that libertarians think reducing regulations is bad and unsafe?
The only thing the government did was get slightly out of the way of private health corps and write a check, even the rollout was underwhelming, the vaccine was a great achievement for scientists and private healthcare enterprises, how in the hell was that a government win?
It's bizarre to me that you look back into COVID as an example of good governance, our heads must be wired different.
I don't really want to relitigate the COVID response by different governments, we've already had that one.
The rollout was unprecedented, we have never had any medicine (as far as I know, I could be wrong) rolled out quite that quickly from proof of concept to millions of doses prepared. Like, what would constitute a win for you?
The only reason the US gov did not capitalise on operation warp speed being the absolute win that it was is because Trump is a moron and he picked up antivaxx rethoric instead.
I don't think COVID was a particularly good example of good governance. I think it was a huge far reaching crisis that had extremely complex inter-related parts. It was so complicated that you won't get two people to agree of what would have been the optimum approach even in retrospect.
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I find it supremely ironic that people like our brain rotten centrist here have the gall to speak of moral clarity when the war is being waged by 2 guys who are in power and escalating wars because they are trying to stay out of jail.
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Northern Ireland26494 Posts
On April 01 2026 19:26 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2026 19:03 Liquid`Drone wrote:
The big difference between supporting nazism and communism today is that communism has a theoretical framework which differs greatly from the real world examples of what self-professed communist countries were like, so you can say that I idealize a communist society where the workers own the means of production and where people get according to need and contribute according to ability etc etc (not getting into whether this is in conflict with human nature or whether it's possible to get there) while also saying that the ussr was a totalitarian shithole entirely different from what I envision and idealized and that Stalin was a truly heinous and despicable dictator whose evils rival those of Hitler.
Whereas if you say that you are a Nazi, that means you support Hitler because the two are intertwined in an entirely different manner. Now if someone says they are believers of white supremacy or scientific racism or something of that sort, they could plausibly be opposed to nazi imperialism or the holocaust, but someone who says they are a nazi cannot. Likewise if you are a self professed stalinist that would be different from saying you are a communist. But still communism has far less stigma than white supremacy, white supremacists consider their beliefs egoistic and pragmatic, unlike communists who believe they operate under a superior moral framework and that is why they are far more dangerous because as CS Lewis said, "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." The older I get the less I care about what people intend and I pay more attention to what people actually do.
And what have Communists been doing lately? Are they in the room with us right now? I’d say genuine socialism is a pretty fringe belief in current year, and Communism even more so.
I’d say you’re mischaracterising both cohorts here to fit your argument. Most overarching belief systems will have some degree of pragmatic consideration as well as a belief that it’s a superior moral framework, otherwise why hold the belief system? It’s probably a split ratio that will vary depending on the belief and the individual, but both are usually involved to meaningful degrees.
The CS Lewis quote is a good line, but it could apply to all sorts of belief systems as well.
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United States43781 Posts
On April 01 2026 18:11 oBlade wrote:
It's not that Iran didn't control the Strait of Hormuz before and now they do. The issue is they have had a hostage for a long time and the process of taking the gun out of their hands is in progress. The problem was the hostage and the gun, everything wasn't hunky dory just because they hadn't shot the hostage yet.
Before the US Navy controlled it. Iran had a force capable of potentially contesting it in a campaign but that campaign hadn't happened yet. You wouldn't say Germany controlled France in 1939. Same thing. Before this war Iran accepted and acknowledged US control over the strait.
On April 01 2026 19:33 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
While certainly having control of the strait of Hormuz is advantageous, it clearly wasn't one of their strategic goals to begin with. If they can do it now under a bombing campaign, after half their senior leadership have been killed, then they could have done it before.
I think they'd have always liked to have set up a toll booth but they couldn't possibly get the geopolitical cover to do so. If they unilaterally started engaging in piracy for no reason then the coalition that Obama put together against them would be back on the table. They'd be being a bad actor.
Trump's gift to them is that he has "forced" them to take the strait.
They were being a good global citizen in so much as they were allowing transit of vital global oil supplies through the waters adjacent to them unmolested for years. They never called the UN and demanded a million dollars in crypto or else they'd close the strait. All they asked was that they not be presented with an existential threat of regime change.
Perhaps if they had closed the strait in 2025 that would have been too much. Back then it was only their nuclear program being "totally destroyed". China might have looked at it and thought "closing the strait over that isn't reasonable, there was no threat to you and you shouldn't want nukes anyway". But in 2025 Iran was restrained and tanked the attacks without using their last resort.
But in 2026 the Israeli led coalition attacked with the explicit goal of regime change which is the one thing that Iran had always communicated that they would close the strait over. Everyone (except apparently Hegseth) was on the same page about that.
Trump has given them geopolitical cover in a way that they never could have otherwise had. He's volunteered to be the bad guy while in a room with the IRGC which is fairly impressive. Hegseth, with his crusader tats and "no quarter" and ranting about "we're negotiating... with bombs!!!!", is beating the Islamists at being a religious fanatic leaving them as the reasonable party. That's why the world isn't helping the US and won't help the US, the newly established Iranian control over the strait is actually fair enough. It's not their fault. They didn't want to be in this position. They won it fair and square in a defensive war. And if they start earning $300,000,000 daily charging transit fees, well, they do have a lot of rebuilding work to do.
But the alternative to Iranian control is the strait controlled by a bunch of religious nutjobs who just attack places on a whim. Nobody wants that.
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Northern Ireland26494 Posts
On April 01 2026 20:55 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2026 19:06 baal wrote:
I'm not implying anything about safety regarding the vaccine do you believe that libertarians think reducing regulations is bad and unsafe?
The only thing the government did was get slightly out of the way of private health corps and write a check, even the rollout was underwhelming, the vaccine was a great achievement for scientists and private healthcare enterprises, how in the hell was that a government win?
It's bizarre to me that you look back into COVID as an example of good governance, our heads must be wired different.
I don't really want to relitigate the COVID response by different governments, we've already had that one. The rollout was unprecedented, we have never had any medicine (as far as I know, I could be wrong) rolled out quite that quickly from proof of concept to millions of doses prepared. Like, what would constitute a win for you? The only reason the US gov did not capitalise on operation warp speed being the absolute win that it was is because Trump is a moron and he picked up antivaxx rethoric instead. I don't think COVID was a particularly good example of good governance. I think it was a huge far reaching crisis that had extremely complex inter-related parts. It was so complicated that you won't get two people to agree of what would have been the optimum approach even in retrospect.
Aye, I also find there’s a bit of cherry-picking, be it on timeframe or location. I don’t think this is necessarily intentional either, it was a reasonably long stretch of time, with different states trying different approaches from one another, or reversing on a course etc.
One would have to do a lot of trawling or have consumed a lot of contemporary media and have a basically eidetic memory to keep track of all those moving parts.
Some scenarios can simply be extremely difficult and complex. Mistakes will naturally be made, some more excusable than others.
Aside from anything else, it was as much, if not more a political and cultural problem than a scientific one. Plenty, but not all errors in retrospect can be put in the former camps and not the latter, but some will attribute it to the science side of the ledger nonetheless.
To take one example, even when we were collectively at peak crisis mode, things like lockdown measures etc were still rather unpopular and unpalatable to many. If they were unpopular when things were at their worst, how unpopular would they have been as a pre-emptive measure? I’d wager, very.
In retrospect would that have been a good idea? Probably, but could you have sold it at the time? Very much less certain
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Trump is so fucking mad that Europe and the gulf states aren't agreeing to his masterfully crafted exit strategy of getting them involved in the war and then immediately dipping out leaving them with a flaming pile of shit.
If Irans government doesn't magically collapse within weeks (which to be fair would be great and I don't give a shit if it gives Trump the biggest W possible) then there are only a few options left.
1. Go home.
2. Iraq level ground invasion.
3. War crime level air campaign where you take out energy infrastructure and powerplants and other shit until Iran is back at preindustrial levels. Bibbi probably goes around with a constant half chub thinking about this option. This is the likely reason EU countries are starting to reconsider an open airspace for bombing. Being complicit in something that will kill hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people and displace tens of millions, will likely triggering extreme civil unrest possibly war, while also fucking the global economy at the same time, is just a bad look.
4. Continue muddling along hoping for the best.
100% that EU is ready to open the strait of Hormuz if the US just fucks off. All they (with the help of China) has to do is to get Israel to back down and Iran should be very receptacle to the idea as long as some of the US redlines are of the table. Since the world doesn't care that much about most of them it would not be difficult.
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EPT
